New Directions
Bootstrapped Web. We are back. We had a couple of weeks off, some some travels, some I I got my my big snow tiny comps out of the way. I'm I'm back at it at home and enjoying some a lot of snow over here in the Northeast right now. Jordan, how are doing, buddy?
Jordan Gal:I'm I'm pretty good. I have been hearing a lot about the snow. I've been very, very casually wintering here in Chicago. It's been nice and easy.
Brian Casel:Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:Brian, I think we should tell people that this isn't a real podcast. This is actually just a sentence prompt in OpenAI's new tool.
Brian Casel:We may or may not be real.
Jordan Gal:That's right. Everything that you hear and see right now was generated from that one prompt.
Brian Casel:That's What do think? That's correct. I think I think we sound pretty accurate.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. We're almost It's Yep. How much longer do we actually have to work as opposed to just writing a prompt of, could you just do this work for me today? And then Yeah. Kind of
Brian Casel:a Even that, really, we just need to, like, sit in a chair and, like, think thoughts, and then they just become reality.
Jordan Gal:I like that. I like that. And And then we can set up an AI to do the thinking for us of those thoughts and then the other AIs could do the work and we could be, you know, out in the world walking around. That was pretty cool.
Brian Casel:In our vision pros of course.
Jordan Gal:It was it was cool to see AI kind of, you know, freaking out again this week with with that. And my favorite part of the week was mister Zuckerberg just sitting on a couch tearing a new one into Apple and most importantly, being completely right.
Brian Casel:You know, he made some good points and and I just love the the raw video recording, which I I guess he he had someone else use the the the Quest headset to record it. Right. It's it's barely edited at all. And, you know, it's just so interesting. By the way, I went into an Apple store and I tried on the the Vision Pro just to get their Okay.
Brennan Dunn:Their little
Brian Casel:their little demo. I I didn't intend to buy it or anything. They they thought I was gonna buy it, I was like, I'm not buying this. I just wanna check it out. Yeah.
Brian Casel:True. Which is also interesting just to experience their their sales process, which, frankly, I I wasn't all that impressed with as as a sales process.
Jordan Gal:They are used to being in such a powerful position in that sales process that they they give off a very dismissive air. They literally say, welcome. We know you wanna pay us a thousand dollars. Take a number and wait, which is a very
Brian Casel:odd It was very the whole thing was very odd. I I feel like we could talk about that, but just alright. Let let's come back to that. But the the the Zuckerberg thing, I love it because it's yeah. It's just so for as a spectator of of business and tech, it's just so cool to see the CEO of the original founder of a what are they?
Brian Casel:Like, a trillion dollar company, like Yeah. Just taking shots at at at the direct competitor, you know, and just being like, yo, we're better.
Jordan Gal:Like, what? But then then going, like, feature for feature. Like when I watched it
Brian Casel:Like making a case. Yep.
Jordan Gal:Yes. When I watched it, the the growing realization inside me of my guy knows the features of his product better than I know the features of my product. Yep. And it was like
Brian Casel:Yeah. It just shows you how He'll come in. Yep. How how, like, embedded in the process he is, how passionate he is about product.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Still got the fire. Still got it.
Brian Casel:I'm not a big fan or user of Facebook itself anymore. I barely even touch threads anymore. I've got a lot of complaints about Facebook's ads product. Sure. That obviously makes them a ton of money.
Brian Casel:But but, yeah, like, it's it is really cool to just see and and, yeah, I don't really see any other CEO, like, doing that. And you can't see you wouldn't expect, like, Tim Cook to to do, like, a response video about Terry or anything like that. Is
Jordan Gal:right. He's a politician at this point. And everything's very careful and very calculated. It's it's Zuck and Elon. That's the show.
Jordan Gal:That's the most entertaining thing in business.
Brian Casel:I think it real and and again, this is one of those takes that I'm that I'm lifting from from John Gruber and Ben Thompson. I really love their their podcast and their writing on on stuff like this. But they make the great point that the original founder is is a different animal than the CEO who is not the original founder of any company, and especially at that high level. You know? Like, that there there's just a they they approach things differently.
Brian Casel:They are maybe it's a a more a higher willingness to take huge risks and huge swings, whether it's product wise or PR wise or whatever it might be, like, a a Zuckerberg or an Elon Musk just thinks about and and approaches their role much differently than a Tim Cook or a, you know, Satya Nadella or, you know, like because they started it. Like, they they remember when they were in the bedroom or in the garage, and it's different for for a non founder CEO.
Jordan Gal:It it might also be like a DNA thing and just personality because they don't need to do anything. They don't need to do anything ever again. Period. Yeah. And yet they're
Brian Casel:They're doing it because they want to. Yes. That's right. And and it's Certainly, freedom. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. In involved in that where yeah.
Brian Casel:The the competition, like, wanna win Yes. They they wanna create, they wanna, you know
Jordan Gal:The honest manifestation of who they are and what they wanna do, there's no pressure behind it.
Brian Casel:They don't
Jordan Gal:care about the salary. None of it matters other than the fact that I can do whatever I want and this is actually what I wanna do. Yeah. It's fun to watch.
Brian Casel:Let's let's talk about the Apple Store for a second. Okay. So I was cure so, actually, I went into an Apple Store twice since the since the VR since the Vision Pro came out. Right? The first time, I just happened to be in an area where there was an Apple Store, I walked in.
Brian Casel:Was like, oh, that might
Brennan Dunn:be cool to Sure.
Brian Casel:Try it on. I walk in. And mind you, like, it was not crowded in this in this Apple store at the time.
Brennan Dunn:It was in the middle of
Brian Casel:a Saturday afternoon. This was in New Haven, Connecticut near near Yale and stuff. And, like, it was not crowded. Like, there was there were a couple VisionPros, like, sitting there on the on the table.
Jordan Gal:Okay.
Brian Casel:And I was like I told the guy, I was like, can I try one on? Can I try it out? And he was like, let me let me slot you in for for a personalized demo. I was like, alright. I was like, can I can I do it, like, now?
Brian Casel:Like, in the next ten minutes? And and he was like, well, our our next available one is ninety minutes from now. And then that that sit down session is gonna take about a half an hour.
Brennan Dunn:And I was like, well, I'm leaving.
Brian Casel:I I I got other things to do today, you know. So Which is
Jordan Gal:in in SaaS world?
Brian Casel:Yeah. Unheard. Like, what are you doing?
Jordan Gal:No. Hold on. They they're forcing you into a demo. Literally forcing
Brian Casel:you into
Jordan Gal:a demo. But
Brian Casel:I mean, I I was I I literally saw Apple store employees standing around doing Like, you could give me the demo now. Like, I don't know why you're making me wait So an about a week later, I'm in a different Apple Store and and same thing happened. Like, I knew going in, like, they're gonna force me into the into the demo, but we happened to be at this mall, and I was like, I know we're gonna eat lunch. So let me just get on the list, and then I can I can come back here in an hour just to try it out? So I did that, and I'm there with my nine year old daughter.
Brian Casel:She's interested in all this stuff too. And I was like, can she try it on? Like, just to see what it's like? She's like, nope. Can't she can't put her in it because she she was like, she needs her own sit down demo experience cause we personalize it to and I was like, well, alright.
Brian Casel:Forget that.
Jordan Gal:Very structured. Wow.
Brian Casel:Very structured. And and, you know, like, I I tried to make it clear upfront, like, hey. Like, I'm a tech guy. I kinda know all this stuff. Like, you don't have to explain it to me like I'm five.
Brian Casel:And there was still, like, a lot of that. And yeah. And, like, just the whole like, the I was pretty impressed with the demo, like like, just seeing some of the content and some and some of the demo things that they're showing me, especially sports, gotta say, is the most exciting thing. But, yeah, it it overall, I I felt like I was I was led down this, like, path that, like, didn't really make me wanna buy it anymore. And there there wasn't anything new that, like, I hadn't seen online on YouTube or anything, like, super compelling.
Brian Casel:And and I actually started to see
Jordan Gal:Or needs or what might be most useful for you, like
Brian Casel:Yeah. Yeah. There there wasn't a lot of that. And frankly, I was more like noticing like all the drawbacks that like or noticing all the shortfalls of a version one. Like, I I heard a lot of reviewers talk about the weight of the thing and I definitely noticed noticed that.
Brian Casel:I I could see how wearing this for an hour longer could Yeah.
Jordan Gal:It's got that big cord.
Brian Casel:It could weigh down. Yeah. And then the other thing that was immediately noticeable was like, it is not totally immersive. You like, I could very clearly see the edges around the goggles. Mhmm.
Brian Casel:And even I don't know if it wasn't fit to my face properly or something, but, like, I saw, like, the outside world, like, out out the sides of it. I was like, that's I don't know. That that's not great. Mhmm. Sports was the thing that was like, wow.
Brennan Dunn:Like Can
Jordan Gal:you get into that? Is it just a giant screen in front of you? Is what what does it?
Brian Casel:No. Movies in general are are are cool because it's like that's a giant screen. So I could see how cool that would be to watch a movie on it. Sports and and here the thing with sports is that it's just not gonna be available for most sports for, like, probably many years to come.
Jordan Gal:Because there's additional content that goes along
Brian Casel:with they gotta have cameras in the stadiums to to achieve a lot of this stuff and, like, and, like, content deals between Apple and NBA or MLB or NFL. Front. Yeah. Front front front
Jordan Gal:and so on.
Brian Casel:So but they they showed a a quick, like, ten second video clip of there was one of soccer where the camera is basically placed at the top of the goal, and you're seeing it from the from behind the goalie. Okay. And you're seeing these shots, like and you're, like, in it. You are the it's it's as if you are as close to to the standing there next to the goalie as possible, which is I'm not even a big soccer player and that or soccer fan. That that was pretty cool.
Brian Casel:The other one was baseball. You're seeing, like, a Red Sox game, and it and it's it's it looks like they have some sort of camera in the dugout. Like, you're sitting, like you're like you're in the dugout and you see you're watching a play Mhmm. Happen. Like like you are on the field.
Brian Casel:And that and and I I didn't see like a basketball thing, like I I would be super interested to see what it would be like to like watch an NBA game like as if you're sitting courtside in this thing. Mhmm. That seems pretty cool.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. It's I don't know how it ends up, you know, as a win or not. Right? Apple had a few of these product lines that just turned into just, you know, the iPhone business itself is just like one of the biggest businesses in the world. It's one product line.
Brennan Dunn:I don't I don't
Jordan Gal:know if this does that. I heard an argument recently from our boy Zuck that glasses are the right, like, form. Mhmm. Lightweight glasses, he likened that to your phone. Everyone relies on their phone.
Brian Casel:Yep.
Jordan Gal:We know it's not perfect to have this thing in your pocket that you hold up and you bend over and you look down on. Like, that's not ideal if you can have a effectively a heads up display for your Yeah.
Brian Casel:Like like AR glasses in in your glasses.
Jordan Gal:Right. Make you phone calls, do your things, like, you know, look at the weather, Twitter, like whatever you're gonna do. And then he talked about the headset as like a laptop. Yeah. So your phone is what you walk around with and it's lightweight and so on, then on your laptop you kinda get work done and you do more stuff.
Brian Casel:I mean, I think that that's
Jordan Gal:that you don't wanna do on your phone.
Brian Casel:I think that's sorta how Apple is is looking at the Vision Pro, and it's interesting that their that their first version has the word pro in it. And they and they keep talking about this idea of spatial computing, like like, you should think about this like a computer. You know? And it's not like a walk around the world with this thing on. It's more like sit at home with the battery pack in your pocket and do your work in it or watch a movie.
Brian Casel:You know? But I I still think we're I I thought that I would probably buy, like, version three, and now I'm starting to think, like, I'm I'm probably waiting till version five or seven. Yeah. We're just gonna
Jordan Gal:see when it clicks.
Brian Casel:That makes sense. I I could see we're we're further off than it seems Yeah. Than this being
Jordan Gal:I also see you know, as a parent now, I see my kid with the phone, and I see it as a necessary evil. It's not all bad. There are a lot of benefits. There's some pitfalls, gotta talk through them. You know, it's one of these things where, like, you can't pretend the world doesn't exist.
Jordan Gal:You have to teach your kid the right way. Yep. But I have negative interest in seeing her put a headset on.
Brian Casel:Right.
Jordan Gal:Like, no thanks. Like, it's already enough when she walks into the car and goes right on her phone. I'm like, hi. Can we talk? Haven't I haven't seen you all.
Brian Casel:I already see that with with their iPads. My kids have iPads and it's like Okay. You know? Yeah. Like, I'll I mean, we're, you know, we're not super hard, maybe as hard as we should be with the screen time with them, but, like, they they spend a lot of time on on that with their heads down and
Jordan Gal:Yep. Yep. Makes you aware of it.
Brian Casel:Yep.
Jordan Gal:Alright, dude. You wanna talk some biz?
Brennan Dunn:Let's do it, man.
Jordan Gal:Alright. I had I had a big was stressful man, don't if stressful is the right word. It was it was a lot of pressure on getting things done the right way. So this week, I had a board meeting. And as we've talked about in the past, that focuses the mind and it forces us to articulate what's happening and why and all these other things.
Jordan Gal:So what made this board meeting different is this is when I came to the board and effectively showed and laid out our thinking and logic and argument for this pivot that we're in
Pippin Williamson:the middle of.
Jordan Gal:And so that's always helpful to just be forced to articulate. Right? I'm I'm calling it the board. There's one outsider. Right?
Jordan Gal:Our lead investor, and then it's myself and Rock and
Brian Casel:Jess. Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:But it still has this sense of formality and importance that it does. So what if I text with Hoon, you know, all the time, the the investor from Arch Capital? This takes that informal ongoing conversation and it puts a marker. Once a quarter, we're gonna get a little serious.
Brian Casel:And there's some legal input input, like some some records that are being laid laid when you do this this meeting too.
Jordan Gal:Yes. Which is, you know, it's not top of mind, but it's there.
Brian Casel:Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:So this is official and this is judged in the future and and and so on.
Brian Casel:It's interesting because we we were chatting about this off air before, but I I guess so in this context, the meeting is like you and this investor and then Rock and Jess, like you, Rock and Jess are already moving along in this direction. It's like they they know the deal at this point. Rock and
Jordan Gal:Jess and I are right. We're in it day to day, so our you know, what what happens, think about any company, it's just this constant evolution, these circles around new thinking, new strategies, learning, mistakes. You you just kinda keep going in this, like, circular, like, evolution from one thing to the next. And these board meetings are like a snapshot in time. Like, given the last three months of evolution and thinking and and hypotheses being proven or not, where are you now?
Jordan Gal:Mhmm. So that that's kinda what it does. It doesn't stop that cycle. It just forces you to take a time out and say, here's our current understanding of where we are, what we're doing right, what we're doing wrong. This one was a bit more, like, dramatic of of that version of that because our conclusion is that, hey, we want we wanna go in a different direction.
Jordan Gal:And so that does require some data, you know.
Brian Casel:Yeah. That gonna be my next question is like, I know you've been experimenting with the new direction with kinda selling this as like marketing tools that you can apply to your checkout process rather than trying to overhaul the entire checkout flow. So what kind of experiments, what kind of data are is convincing you that, like, we're going this direction?
Jordan Gal:The most important thing is is customer demand. That is by far the most important thing. There's other things, but by far the most important thing is when we have gone back into our lost pile in our CRM of prospects that we went through the sales process and ended up not buying. When we went back to them and said, hey, we're doing this thing now, the percentage of those merchants that say, yes, that sounds interesting, we wanna talk, is very, very high. And we we knew that along the way because the merchants, they were telling us, we want your marketing features.
Jordan Gal:We think that will work. This new checkout sounds great. And then between that initial interest and the decision to not sign a contract, that is that's the set of pitfalls and dangers that we are effectively naming as insurmountable at this stage. Given our resources and the timing and the goals and the runway, all these other things combined, that feels like we should stop trying to make that work, and we should make this other thing work, and here's the evidence that is telling us that it's that it makes sense, that that's a logical, smart thing for us to do.
Brian Casel:Yeah. So you're saying, like, more demos booked, more, like, sales conversations.
Jordan Gal:That's right. That's right. And so, you know, what we've what we've named, it it happened to coincide with the beginning of the year. Right? Q one.
Jordan Gal:And what q one forces you to do, the other piece of formality and requirement for the board is a budget with projections. So what's the next year gonna look like? What are your projections? And show us the budget so that, you know, we're all approving a plan on how to spend money over the next year. Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:And so looking at that is extremely helpful. You you we've we've talked about this multiple times. You look at an Excel sheet and it talks to you. It it tells you things.
Brennan Dunn:Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:And so doing that going through that exercise, the budget and projection exercise ahead of the board meeting was even more convincing.
Brian Casel:So it made me It more changes the math on the runway and
Jordan Gal:Just the approach and the revenue model and the pricing model and the go to market and then it starts to bleed into, well, how do you pay salespeople and how many salespeople do you need and all that. Mhmm. Yeah. So that was this week and then as soon as that went out, I took all that work and put into an investor update and let the entire investor group know. Right?
Jordan Gal:Because that's I don't even know. It's like 30 people or so. So now it feels like a a burden off. It's not we're not we're not doing this on our own and we're not sure. We're not look you know, like some uncertainty.
Brian Casel:Everybody knows the plan. Yes. It's official. We're we're going.
Jordan Gal:Yes. Yes. Yeah. And so it's
Brian Casel:I like it.
Jordan Gal:You know, then then you start you obviously, you you build up, like, this fear around people's reactions. But when I wrote the investor update, I was in a good mood, and I was in a confident mood because the board meeting went well, and we convinced ourselves internally that this is the right move. Like, we we didn't just, like, think it. We, like, went through the work to show it. And then that felt great.
Jordan Gal:And so when I wrote the investor update, I was writing it from a position of strength. And I think it it comes out in the language of the update and in the framing. And so what I got back was very, positive feedback. Shout out to Rob Walling, always a good friend and a good supporter. He kinda wrote out a full like, hey.
Jordan Gal:This is a hell of investor update. All makes sense. We're behind you. Definitely not easy, but blah blah blah. So now I'm kinda riding high.
Jordan Gal:It's Friday at the end of the week. We went out, we made it all public, we kind of articulated the reasoning, the responses. Hell yeah. Go go get them. Let let's see what you can do.
Brian Casel:Love it.
Jordan Gal:Now now it feels like, you know, the fresh opportunity kind of begins.
Brian Casel:Yeah. That's great, man. I'm I'm excited. Where are you at on the on the so, like, there's, like, product and then there's, like, marketing pipeline. Like, what what parts are, like with this new direction, what parts are like up and running?
Brian Casel:What parts are partially running? What parts are not built and shipped yet? Like, what's what are your, like, top priorities to get things get the new direction going?
Jordan Gal:So there there there's a there's a split. Sales and marketing, not surprisingly, is ahead of product. Mhmm. Because sales marketing requires changing documents and changing emails and changing words. Much easier than get features into a sprint, get them QA'd, get them deployed, and so on.
Jordan Gal:So sales and marketing is ahead of product, and product is not far behind. And what that really means is we are I I I guess we're we're from a product engineering point of view, we're approaching it as a beta. First few customers are under a beta. It's not perfect. When you walk into the product and you sign up, there's still a screen that says checkout where you can, like, adjust, you know, like, your checkout logos and all this other stuff.
Brian Casel:From a product standpoint, you're not building again from the ground up. You're more adapting your existing code base?
Jordan Gal:Yes. So if you think about our checkout, our checkout had these marketing features inside of the checkout. So our admin is like home, right, for analytics and then there's checkout for all your checkout options and then it's order bumps and then it's funnels which are the post purchase offers. And so those two parts of the admin stay the same. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:It's the same building process and functionality and like a little building wizard or whatever you wanna call it. That remains exactly the same. It's just that it goes on your check instead of ours. So eventually what we need to just like I know it's, more complicated but effectively comment out.
Brian Casel:I was just gonna say, like, you you can just hide that link. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Yes. Can you just, like, hide, you know, these tags right here? It's more complicated than that, but that's effectively what we're doing. Mhmm. The the the place where I am most interested and I spent an hour and a half today in a long conversation is pricing.
Jordan Gal:That I think is going to make or break, might be a bit hyperbolic, but will have a huge, huge impact. And that has been evolving over the last few weeks. The most important thing this week externally is that we got our first verbal yes. So not only do we have prospects that we're talking to, but one of them has said, yes. I wanna do this.
Jordan Gal:Mhmm. And it was according to our our almost ideal pricing. Meaning, I'll I will pay you thousands of dollars upfront for the ability to use this product, and then I will delay the decision on whether or not we wanna stick with this forever off into the future, and that gives us the opportunity to perform.
Brian Casel:Yeah. So they're effectively, like, paying for your development on it a little a little bit or at least in or at least giving you the indicator, like, we're we're willing to pay upfront for something in the future
Brennan Dunn:on this.
Jordan Gal:So the way we have, like, these certain parameters that we're trying to hit. One of those parameters is upfront. There there's gotta be an element of upfront revenue. It's good for us because it helps effectively pay for our marketing expenses. Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:Right? So it basically fuels the the the the sales. And we also want it because having skin in the game is infinitely better. We we have had checkout customers that have processed millions of dollars and they never turned on the marketing features. Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:Because it's such a big lift to get it up there and then if you don't have enough momentum with the team internally, they just don't make time. They're just busy.
Brian Casel:Because the checkout sort of like blocked them. They didn't even get to the good stuff.
Jordan Gal:They haven't even done yes. So like getting skin in the game is a requirement and then I wanna make sure that there is almost no reason to cancel after the initial period. So we initially went out and said, we're gonna do, like, a proof of value period, and it's, like, $5,000 for sixty days. And then after that, you can decide if you wanna stay. And that accomplished a bunch of things, but it didn't wasn't quite right.
Jordan Gal:Now we're moving toward instead of a set time frame, a set dollar amount. So it's like $5,000 for your first 50 k in incremental revenue. Right. So we're I think it's almost there. We're gonna go back out to those people that we've made offers to and say, hey, made an update.
Jordan Gal:How does this sound? It feels pretty close.
Brian Casel:You had mentioned to me like like this idea of cons like selling software as consulting. Like like the like a consultative approach to selling these these deals. Is that is that what you mean here where, like, they they're sort of, like, paying up front for this engagement where your team will implement these marketing tools. Not so much like custom building for them but like custom integrating and implementation.
Jordan Gal:Yes. We we want the merchant to feel like it's low risk. Right, so it's not this 50 or $100,000 risk. So $5,000, you know, these merchants can basically do that without much approval.
Brian Casel:So
Jordan Gal:that's important for them to see it as like, well, I don't have much to lose. There's really only upside here. At at the same time, the the spot in the market kind of requires us to take this type of a I think leads us to this type of a pricing approach Because there there's a lot of demand for this on Shopify. What we're doing right now will not work. It won't work.
Jordan Gal:On Shopify, you need to be product led. You need to build a product specific to the Shopify platform. You need the pricing to be tailored to that. It's like a how do you get a thousand customers approach.
Brian Casel:Not
Jordan Gal:not for we don't wanna do that.
Brian Casel:Yep.
Jordan Gal:Then there's WooCommerce. There's lot of demand there. Too small doesn't quite make sense. Mhmm. So it's this specific spot of these merchants that do 10 to $100,000,000 a year.
Jordan Gal:This is how they buy. We just learned a lot about their buying patterns and decisions. And so a $5,000, like, proof of value type period would just not work for a Shopify merchant and is actually perfect for a $50,000,000 a year Salesforce merchant.
Brian Casel:Yeah. I love it.
Brennan Dunn:Yep. Makes a ton of sense, man.
Jordan Gal:I I will report back hopefully by the time we have another podcast that we closed our our first deal. That's my goal. One closed deal in February.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Nice. I mean, I'm excited. I I it's been cool to see this, like, build up week to week and month to month over the last couple months here, and and this this feels like a turning point. This this is like a like a committing to to the Yes.
Brian Casel:To the plan, you know.
Jordan Gal:Yes. I we got the question. Why not keep selling the checkout product? Because, of course, you know how this works. Right?
Jordan Gal:Of course, as we're making this decision, some of the biggest ecommerce merchants in the world, like, are approaching us right now asking about checkout. Like Mhmm. One of the biggest, most popular sports car brands that we would all recognize, and then one of the biggest like nutritional supplement type bar companies in the world coming to us and saying we need a new checkout and we know we know what it means that when someone says yes, I want what you have, it does not mean it's gonna get a deal closed. Yep. So we're kind of there.
Jordan Gal:We're confident even when these big opportunities are coming away, we know that we are on the right track.
Brian Casel:That's I think we were talking about this last time where it's like, it I it's we we've seen especially if you've done a bunch of businesses and you've been you've done this rodeo a few times and and, you know, I've I've seen this recently pivoting to Clarity Flow, that this sort of pivot is so hard as an entrepreneur, especially when you see some demand for the original thing, but you've also been sort of burned enough times to see the roadblocks. Like, though that initial offer, there's a little bit of spark there that brings interest in. Yeah, there are all these onboarding hurdles, activation hurdles, blockers that even they, the buyer, don't necessarily see until they're further in the thing, and then it's just a problem for everyone.
Jordan Gal:I I like the idea that the worst possible type of business is a mediocre business because you just you just keep trying and trying.
Brian Casel:You keep trying. It's not a yeah. Right. If it's a horror show
Jordan Gal:and there's Story of my career here. Yeah. I think all of us Yeah. I think everyone listening knows the feeling of, okay. This is working well enough that I can't quit.
Jordan Gal:I can't stop. I can't justify stopping. And when it's a horror show of business, you just drop it quickly.
Brian Casel:Yeah. So much easier. There's so I I I really there have been so many times where I just wished that, like, I wish there wasn't I wish there was zero demand for this thing. Yes. And it and it's almost never the case.
Brian Casel:There it's almost I don't I can't remember launching anything to zero customers. And that's the hardest thing. Yeah. It's always
Jordan Gal:The most dangerous. Not not good. Alright, homie. What do you got going on?
Brian Casel:What's Alright. So I'm gonna maybe turn it back to you because I've got my I'm you know, I've I've been dialing in and in and and through exploring on different options on where to focus my energy and investment of time and dollars and everything in the year ahead. I feel like this has become more and more focused on a gradual, and it's been sort of like a trial and error basis over the last two, three months. So at this point, it has come to I see my business world as as a pie chart, it's sort of broken into three parts. There are two that are probably more significant than the third.
Brian Casel:One is Clarity Flow. That's still very much in play, a big part of my time and effort and energy. Just hired a customer success person. We're doing a lot of work on the product there. That's like one third of the pie.
Brian Casel:Although it's not necessarily one third of my hours. It's probably more than that. The the next big chunk that I'm that I'm spending a lot of time and energy on right now is basically starting up a consulting business, a consultancy in in product development with with clients. I could talk more about that. And then the third piece is is the audience piece.
Brian Casel:I talked about starting up this YouTube channel. And so the big picture, the way that I see all of it sort of fitting together in a way is I'm a product person. I'm a product designer, product developer, full stack. I pretty much identify with the role of like a product manager, but from a founder's perspective. And I do product in three ways.
Brian Casel:One is I run my own product, that's Clarity Flow. The other is I consult with teams on developing new products in in partnership with them. And then the third piece is full stack founder, the the growing an audience around.
Jordan Gal:Okay.
Brian Casel:I I would I would think of it more like thought leadership in product development at this point. Mhmm. And maybe some some teaching, some opinionating
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Kind
Brian Casel:of form of of video and tweets. Proving yourself
Jordan Gal:out in public instead of just working with you.
Brian Casel:And and all of these are in various stages of development. Like Clarity Flow, I I essentially is up and running. And and and I I have evolved the team there, and there's lots of things happening. Consultancy is still in the exploration stage, but I'm I'm actively working with some clients, and I'm learning a lot, and now I'm dialing in what this thing looks like in year one and year two and beyond. And right now, I'm actually working on writing up a landing page for this consultancy based on what I'm learning from the clients that I'm currently working with.
Brian Casel:And then the third piece is the audience thing where it it it's been really hard to, like, outsource the video editing. I feel like I finally figured that piece out and and there's been a gap in publishing because I've been figuring out how to outsource the editing. Now I figured that out, so now I can get back on the train of, like, being able to record things and just drop it into Dropbox.
Jordan Gal:Okay. I'm interested in that separately.
Brian Casel:So okay. So that's that's the pie. It's, clarity flow, consultancy, and content. I'm gonna throw it to you because I have updates on all three that I could talk about. What should
Jordan Gal:I talk about? Alright. Well, let's right. It's almost like Clarity Flow is investing for the future. You are not getting back a dollar for every dollar of effort.
Jordan Gal:It's just off in the future. It's it's a curve, and it just sucks now, and then it swings up later.
Brian Casel:Yeah. And and the and the thing with Clarity Flow is that it happens to be doing pretty well here in January and February. Growth has been up a bit, but it's nowhere near the level of being able to pay for my full time income, so I have to have other things cooking. Yes. That's right.
Brian Casel:But the one big thing there has been, just this week, Kat is starting in customer success.
Jordan Gal:Okay, nice.
Brian Casel:And my role is currently still doing a lot of customer support success work myself, but my role is product, like it is with everything, and we're improving the product. Every single week now, we're getting around to the small UX improvements. And it's been really fun to quick ship these instead of hammering these huge features that we were doing last year. Now now we're getting back around to the long list of little, like, remove all the friction in the product. That's that's been fun to to do.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. So
Brian Casel:mean That's central story at at Clarity Flow.
Jordan Gal:Okay. I mean, that that's how I would kinda split it up. Like, okay. For your long term, it's basically your your your equity, your big upside in Clarity Flow.
Brian Casel:Like, it just needs more years to get there, and and I need to be doing something else in the meantime.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. That that that's right. I think it's you you you always seem to be pretty good at this alignment around the content that you wanna create and the service that you wanna offer. And I think that's like, you know, just being around for a while and figuring out how to be authentic because that's what you like to do. This product stuff is genuinely what you like to do.
Brian Casel:You know, that's been the most sort of interesting and almost surprising thing to me with consulting. This year is the first time in many years that I'm actually working with clients that are that aren't customers of a product of mine. I, you know, I I I it's been so so long since I've actually done client consulting work, and it's been a really interesting thing. And and I and I think I feared this for so many years where it's like, oh, I I hope I never have to resort to getting back into consulting. But now that I'm actually doing it, I'm kinda excited about it.
Brian Casel:I'm I'm having fun with it. And And that's the thing. It's like, I'm a product person now. I'm a software product designer, developer, product manager. I mix all those skills together.
Brian Casel:I'm using the term full stack founder. Right? It's interesting to be able to offer that type of value to clients and it's been interesting to see the types of clients and their specific needs why it might make sense for them to bring someone like me in. Mhmm. And this is informing some of the copy that I'm working on for a landing page for this thing.
Jordan Gal:I was gonna say that insight on that's one of those things that's invisible to almost everyone. I I have, you know, my the Slack group that I'm in with the Portland guys, the Ruben Gomes and Ewalt and a few other guys, they they always learn something from my decision making process because I raised money.
Brennan Dunn:Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:And and they're always like, oh, that's interesting that for you paying $6,000 a month for a marketing agency is like a bargain.
Brian Casel:Right.
Jordan Gal:But but when you are like the solo, we like one or two person shop that wants to start a marketing agency, you're like, how can I charge $6,000 a month? Does that make sense? So like that that ability to understand what a company might need and why it makes sense for them to go out and pay you to build something is like that's the key insight. And then putting that into the content is what puts you ahead because you actually understand what what they're dealing with.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Totally. And and it's been I love the process of sort of like a love hate process of, like, writing these, like, landing pages to to sell this service, but it's such an iterative thing. Because I I I feel like I've written this page, like, three or four times over the last four months. And in the early days, I was passing around this this coaching concept that it was totally in theory with no actual client work under my belt yet.
Brian Casel:And then I worked with some clients and I tabled the coaching model. And then I went into this other, kept adapting the way that I'm consulting with clients. And now that I've done it with a couple of clients and I'm doing it and I'm talking about some deals on the table now, it's a clearer sense of what goes into it. And so there are basically two forms of consulting that I'm offering now. One is this, like, I'm calling it, like, product planning sprints.
Brian Casel:And, you know, I've I've done it with one. I'm I'm in the middle of a second one. I've got another one talking to where it's, for two weeks, sometimes three weeks, I work with you and or your teammate to plan out a big new product initiative. That maybe the In one case it was like starting up a whole new product, like a second product in business. In another case, was sort of like overhauling their whole onboarding experience.
Brian Casel:Like a big, hairy new product that needs to be started and thought through and strategized and architected. I I come in to to help do all that stuff. Like, ask a ton of questions, think strategically, think technically, map and maybe do some wireframing, some some sketching. And at the end of this two or three week thing, like, you have a road map, you have a a a product plan, like, ready to hand off to your developers and go. And and I like I like that concept because it's like I I get to think strategically as a as a product person, basically like a what what's interesting is like it's like a a SaaS company who is who is really preoccupied with running their current product.
Brian Casel:So they've got developers, they've got support people, they've got success people who are selling and maintaining and building on their current product. That SaaS company still has big new ideas that they want to get off the ground, that they wanna take from zero to one.
Jordan Gal:Is that the ideal customer?
Brian Casel:Is That seems to be the ideal customer because, like, it it's like you can it's so hard for an existing SaaS company to, like, pull your developers off their tasks to go work on this thing that we need to start from the ground up. Yes. Everybody involved. You can, like, bring me in to, like, work off in the corner and be the be the mad scientist to think through the the the new concept for the for the new thing. Whether that's like a an onboarding flow or a new product or whatever it might be.
Jordan Gal:When when you put it that way, it's really interesting. Right? So so one of my investors, Adam, one of the Portland guys actually, he has this concept that he always comes it's it's a bit of a joke now because he's brought it up so often, but it's this concept of, like, a strike force.
Brian Casel:Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:Like, okay. Let's say you have 25 employees and you have an idea. Can you peel off a strike force of five or six people and let them work on something for two months and launch this idea that you have? Yep. It is impossible.
Jordan Gal:It's impossible because you there's too much. There's there's too much going on. You're already making a set of trade offs
Brian Casel:Yeah.
Jordan Gal:And decisions Mhmm. And sacrifices as is. The idea that you can go 100% on those trade offs is unrealistic.
Brian Casel:Yeah. And that's and that's exactly how so when I'm doing these, like, strategic sprints with clients, like, that's how they're basically using me. It's like, usually the founder themselves is the one working directly with me. A couple calls, we do a lot of async work, we're working in Notion over two or three weeks. And it's almost like they're working with me in secret, like separate from from their team.
Brian Casel:They don't wanna disrupt their team on their current work, but they but they need to get this new thing, like, off the ground and and thought through.
Jordan Gal:You're like an executive team's ability to act on a hypothesis.
Brian Casel:That's the idea. Yeah. And I'm working with different headlines on this thing. I don't know. I'm playing around with the h one being something like, starter for hire, you know, like, you know You
Jordan Gal:play you should play with that, that terminology, because
Brian Casel:Yeah.
Jordan Gal:If I think back
Brian Casel:to Like, take taking an idea from zero to one. You know?
Jordan Gal:Yes. Or or execute on your best idea or something like that. If I think about before I launched Cardhook, I was on the lookout for this type of a service. I was like, how would I just write a check for $50,000 and just have a product in the market?
Brian Casel:Right.
Jordan Gal:And it it doesn't work. And and I think that's actually not a great customer
Brian Casel:for you.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. It's not.
Brian Casel:So this this particular consulting thing, this model of, like, advising and strategizing is, like, just the planning work. Just take it from concept in my brain to detailed, written up Notion docs, roadmapped out, like these are the priorities, here's what would go into v one, here's what won't go into v one, maybe some user flows. And then like at the end of this, it's like a package that we can like have the developer team start working on. But then there's this other big offering where it's like instead of just me advising, like, actually hire me and my small team to actually build a whole version one of a product from from zero to built. And this is a multi month engagement.
Brian Casel:I've been in talks with a couple of clients about this. I haven't, landed this yet, but there's there's I I've had a few discussions. One of them is pretty likely to happen at some point this year. You know, multiple 5 figure proposal over several months where where it basically involves, like, me plus a developer or two from my team, and we're take and and, again, it's like you you either have a concept for a product, and and in in both of these cases, it it was like an established SaaS company who is planning a second product from their company. It's like a related, like cross sell type product.
Jordan Gal:It's it's an idea they wanna act on.
Brian Casel:That's It's an idea that they wanna act on, and they are too preoccupied with running their first product, but they know they know there's demand. They know they know they know that they have access to a market, and they want to act on it. And so I'm being brought in as like a super efficient, like fast, you know how me and my team, we just ship products because we're lean
Jordan Gal:And you're not inspired and by all the things that are currently happening internally.
Brian Casel:Exactly.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. When I this is really this is cool. And that
Brian Casel:one is like, you know, these are bigger products, bigger price tags, and in some select cases, it's a mix of, like, cash and equity. You know?
Jordan Gal:It opportunity makes sense.
Brian Casel:If if it makes sense for both of us. But at at the end of the day, it's like majority is, like, cash based, and and there's some logistics over, alright. You've got me plus my developer for a few months, and then some options after that. Maybe the developer transfers. Maybe we stay on as, like, an advising role.
Brian Casel:Like, there's there's options. But so these are things that I'm, like, kinda strategizing and road mapping as a as a consultancy, as a company. Like, you know? So like here in year one in 2024, it's me basically selling myself because you're getting me on all these projects, and I might bring in a developer or two to help in some cases. If this continues, then year two, let's see if we can double our capacity and maybe bring on a few more developers, maybe eventually bring on a project manager.
Brian Casel:Like, maybe this turns into a product dev shop, product dev studio agency type of model. And again, it just gets back to like I love to design and build and start projects, products from the ground up. The more I can do that, whether it's with client partners or my own stuff, I I that's, you know, good way to make money, good way to spend my time, I think. You know?
Jordan Gal:I I I love it. Can I wanna give you two pieces of, like, opinion from from my point of view?
Brennan Dunn:Please.
Jordan Gal:Number one, whatever you think you can charge, you can charge a lot more. Yeah. Because and and that's related to point number two. Point number two is that there are a decent number of private software companies with millions of dollars in the bank, and things are not going great for them and they would love to launch an idea to see I I mean, I have one in mind right now. Everyone's got one in mind.
Brian Casel:Everyone's got one. Everyone's And got the and the conventional wisdom is like don't do it.
Jordan Gal:You can't do it.
Brian Casel:Don't don't do the shiny object.
Jordan Gal:To that's right. That's right.
Brian Casel:Now The the the what I'm seeing what I'm actually seeing, and this is literally what I'm learning in real time, is there there's a lot of SaaS or at least the ones that I've been in contact with. There's a lot of companies who it does make sense strategically for them to grow by expanding their product line.
Jordan Gal:I see. I see. Maybe they're mature in their life cycle.
Brian Casel:Yeah. They're yeah. They're they're mature in their life cycle.
Jordan Gal:Market becoming more competitive. Whatever that that set of circumstances.
Brian Casel:There's that. And and there's also, like, in some cases, there's, like the new product could be, like, a version two of their current product. Like, maybe a rebuild
Jordan Gal:same base. Yeah.
Brian Casel:Or or it's sometimes it's, like, not just a new product. It it sometimes it's, like, just a big new part of their existing product.
Jordan Gal:Mhmm.
Brian Casel:Like, I was working with one where it's like, all right, they've got this big well established SaaS product, but they need like an education center for their customers. And that's like a whole new value proposition that they're offering, but they need a whole admin interface and the whole customer interface and like it's a whole new thing, you know?
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Really, really interesting. And the the the point I wanted to make about, you know, number one there in terms of a company is gonna look at this and going to assume ongoing investment. So the the initial investment is a relatively small part of the total investment. Yep.
Jordan Gal:So if you look at the initial investment, let's just reuse round numbers as a $100,000, as the manager, you know you're gonna spend hundreds of thousands of dollars over the next year or
Brian Casel:two. Yeah. We're starting something new. What we're talking about here is just version one, you know. And that and I've been thinking through that as well.
Brian Casel:Right? So I haven't gotten to this point in any deal yet, but the but in theory, we would spend x number of months going from concept to to built and shipped version one. Maybe you call that an MVP. I don't tend to like that term. I liked version one.
Brian Casel:But yeah, post version one, I could see my company offering kind of a menu of options. And one would be, one that I think is sort of interesting, I haven't tested this, is okay, if I bring on a developer or two from like an outsourced development agency to work with me on building version one, maybe there's like an option for like a that developer is transferred for like a recruiting fee to have them transferred under the direct employment. As if I just recruited you a developer to continue and it happens to be the same one that built your version one with I see that. The other option would be like a fractional product management retainer. Right?
Brian Casel:So if you already have your developers in house, they can take this existing version one product and maintain it, but you still want some, like, strategic advising on product direction and roadmap for version two, version three, I can be available for fractional product management type of role. Maybe, again, if this dev shop grows over then maybe we offer, like, actual ongoing product maintenance retainers as a service. Right? Yep. But I I I think ideally, like, the ideal thing and no matter what the well, no the ideal thing no matter what the client is, what I'm is we're brought in to start something.
Brian Casel:Mhmm. Like, I I don't love the idea of being a dev shop where we can just plug into your existing code base and we're just another developer in a chair somewhere. Like, I I I really, really like the idea of, like, bring me in, bring in my small team to, let's let's build something new off in the corner and let's get go from zero to one. That's the main value, and then we're we'll we'll have options to continue to maintain that going forward, you know.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. I like it. Very, very interesting. Look at us starting new businesses in 2024.
Brian Casel:Yeah, man.
Jordan Gal:Alright, my man. I I gotta run. I got a 02:30. I gotta drive too. It's Friday.
Jordan Gal:It's my birthday this weekend.
Brennan Dunn:Is it? Oh, man.
Brian Casel:Happy birthday.
Jordan Gal:Absolutely. Thank you very much. I'm gonna have fun with the fam. We're gonna go skiing. I think I'm just not
Brian Casel:Oh, your favorite thing to do for your
Jordan Gal:birthday, Alex. Yes. Thanks, honey.
Brian Casel:Nice. Yeah. We're going skiing tomorrow too. We're going to one of these tiny hills here in Connecticut. Gonna bring the Yeah.
Brian Casel:You haven't heard But at least we got a bunch of snow, that should be fun.
Jordan Gal:You haven't heard of the majestic slopes in Wisconsin?
Brian Casel:I have not.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Neither have I. But that's
Brian Casel:where I'm going. I think I'm gonna hear from from you about it though.
Jordan Gal:Whatever. I get to I get to hang. Actually, a nice setup where the kids can go up and there's like, you know, like the little hut is right at the base. So you can basically have a beer and literally watch your kids go up and then just get
Brian Casel:back up. Oh, beautiful. That's great. Beautiful.
Jordan Gal:Happy Friday.
Brian Casel:Alright. Later, folks.
